by Paula Guran
“I still think we gave up too soon, Brimm.” Snoori wiped ale froth from his yellow beard and went on. “The Voorhi probably had the gold hidden under those enormous heaps of dung.”
“Then it can stay there!” Brimm arched an eyebrow, and leaned back in the teetering wooden chair, toying with his ancient dagger—he held it between his long index fingers, its dulled point not quite penetrating his pale skin. “The only thing the beast-men hoarded was fleas. And I nearly froze in those mountains.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“You were born with your own coat of fat and fur.”
“It’s not fur. I’m simply gifted of a little more body hair than some men.”
Snoori scowled at his flagon of ale and Brimm glanced about the tavern. There were but two others in the low-ceilinged, sag-floored old tavern: an old man in a bearskin cloak muttering sadly over a goblet and the heavy-browed woman who brought the ale. She licked her lips and winked at Brimm when he glanced her way. Brimm shivered, partly from the night’s chill and partly from pondering what he might have to do to pay for a pallet in the tavern loft. “How about a fire, innkeeper?” he called. “It’s fearful cold in here.”
“Why, you have your candles!” she said, her voice creaking at her own wit. “But you may have your fire, if you pay for its making! Two groats!”
A shared leg of tough mutton and two ales had depleted Brimm’s resources. He had not even a groat.
Struck by a thought, Snoori looked up at him, his flaring mustaches lifted by a smile. “You wish warmth? Atlantis is warm! It is far to the south, just west of the Pillars of the Gods, and everyone who trades there basks in the glory of the sun!”
Brimm snorted. “Some are sacrificed to the glory of the sun god, from what I’ve heard.”
He shrugged. “They’re more likely to be sacrificed to Poseidon. Occasionally someone is chained to sea rocks as the tide rises. Crabs as big as calves eat them.” He raised a finger to forestall Brimm’s inevitable reaction. “But—! We need not run afoul of priests and their acolytes! Remember, as a boy I went to Atlantis with my uncle. I have seen it with my own eyes! And truly it is such a pleasantly warm place—hot springs bubble through the island. The very ground is warm to the touch!”
Watching the cold plume of his own breath quiver the candle flame, Brimm tugged his father’s tattered red velvet cloak closer about his slender shoulders. The thought of going to a warm land had a certain appeal. He was tired of Hyperborea, no less weary of Hypexa, Hyperborea’s sprawling, biggest, most malodorous port city. He had been tired of Hyperborea for most of his twenty-two years. He was raised in the shipyards of Hypexa, though his mother—who had given him his fine-boned features, onyx eyes, and shiny jet-black hair—was said to have been Thracian. Brimm looked like a foreigner in this land; was often treated like one. He felt no loyalty to Hyperborea’s ice-bound mountains, its rocky shores noisy with querulous sea birds and walruses, nor to the blond ruffians who made up its seafarers. Was he not a refined man of the world—had he not studied with Urgus himself, in far Keltia?
A man of the world? He shrugged ruefully, amused at himself. In truth he’d seen little of the great world, only Keltia and a few other ports.
Atlantis was supposedly bristling with castles painted in leaf of gold. He had seen the Atlantean triremes, passing Hypexa by: grand triple-decked ships of mahogany trimmed in ornately carved ivory, figureheads of Poseidon gazing at the horizons with eyes of burnished emerald. The sun was indeed said to be friendly on the vast island of Atlantis, and the women were rumored to be friendlier to men of the north than their own mincing, decadent husbands.
Yes. Atlantis had a certain appeal . . .
But Snoori planned a skulk into some Atlantean fastness after “easy treasure,” and in Brimm’s opinion, if ever treasure was easy to find, it had already been found and spent.
Still—Brimm was a Svell, son of Hosly Svell, with a blood-born obligation to take to the sea. Brimm’s name, in fact, was Brimir Svell—his first name meaning “rover.” But most called him Brimm the Savant—a nickname not without irony, thanks to their doubts that he was truly a savant who had studied with Urgus. Yet it was so. It was also true that he had been expelled after seven seasons, not quite two years, for breaking into the great sorcerer’s Arct Scrolls. Did Urgus praise Brimm for his acumen in discovering the secret room? Did he appreciate Brimm’s cunning in persuading the guardian—hippogriffs love fresh fish, and meat still bloody—to admit him into the Arct Chamber?
No! Instead, the intractable old sorcerer had cursed him for his temerity, smiting him with blindness in one eye and a painful limp, a curse lasting an entire year. The maladies had passed away at midnight of the anniversary of his expulsion. A torment, yes, but it was the dismissal that hurt more.
Still—Brimm could now see with two clear eyes; he could stride with steady steps, and just as important, he was one of the few living men schooled to keenness with an Atlantean piercer. His father had taught Brimm well, as Hosly Svell had been taught by his own father; for Brimm’s grandfather had made his fortune as a mercenary employed by King Squen, Lord of the Fifth Kingdom of Atlantis. Brimm’s father insisted that the slender, finally turned, silver-hued piercer was the only sword of its kind north of Atlantis—and few remained in Atlantis itself, the metal’s secret having been lost with the death of its forger. The blade was his father’s only patrimony, apart from the cloak and the chipped old iron dagger. Hosly Svell gambled, drank, and whored away his shipbuilding profits, yet had affected to look down upon Brimm for being cast out of his apprenticeship.
Brimm sighed. It was true, Father had traded a solid gold orb for his son’s place in the halls of Urgus, and Brimm had squandered his chances. Perhaps indeed, Brimm had been beaten, as Urgus told him, by his first real battle. “You have been defeated in battle: defeated by your own youth. Maturity is the first bridge to win across, and you were driven back; defeated by a protracted boyhood . . . ”
There had been nothing for it but to prove himself in other tests, in other places. Even one-eyed and limping, he had won three duels with experienced warriors. A Kelt and two Hyperboreans went down before the piercer. They were strong, fierce, and slow men with clumsy broadswords and axes of iron. He had carved them almost at his leisure.
But the duels had left nothing but a sense of sickened obligation. Urgus had sent him on his way with a bag of silver pieces—the silver had been doled out by the handful as compensation to the widows of his felled opponents, and now he had no funds for dueling, nor any desire for it.
Fighting as a mercenary, perhaps defending ships from occasional pirates—that he could do with a will. But so far the shipmasters had looked on him and laughed. He was tall and lean, more like a willow than an oak; he carried a weapon that, to their eyes, looked like a slender saber made of some light metal meant for jewelry, sure to break at the first clash. Fragile the piercer was not, he swore; it was in fact stronger than iron, and sharper than iron ever could be. But they only laughed and waved him away. To Brimm, it was as if in dismissing his sword, they dismissed Brimir Svell; he was too much like his sword. His father had waved him away, on his deathbed. “Take the sword, take your great-grandfather’s dagger, take my seafaring cloak—and go.”
Brooding over such things awoke pangs within Brimm. He shook his head. Best not to think on it. He needed something to keep his mind busy . . .
“Very well, then, Snoori. What is this new absurdity you call a plan?”
Excitement in Snoori’s eyes joined with reflected candlelight as he leaned forward to whisper eagerly across the table. “On the north side of the great island of Atlantis are impassible cliffs made of sheer green glass coughed up from a forgotten volcano—but there is one place where rise the ramparts, jutting right over the sea. This is the outer wall of the city of Poseidonia. It is circled with fields and orchards and a river jumping with fish. And there, in an old palace, is beauteous Cleito, a princess who has offered ten b
ushels of gold to any force of ten men who will become the Swords of her Heart: the champions who will destroy the minor demon of the piddling sorcerer who keeps her bound in a cavern. Now, all one has to do is join this band, help them slay a demon and, perhaps, an odious old man, and they each will receive a bushel of gold and . . . ” He paused dramatically. “ . . . a helmet full of pearls!” He cleared his throat. “Oh and the bravest of her champions will win her hand—that’s just by the by. Why do you look at me that way?”
“I cannot believe you are once more babbling on about winning the hands of princesses.” Brimm shook his head. “Gods! How many times at the temple of edification, when you should have been learning your letters, you maundered on about such myths!”
“But I have heard the tale from many a sailor! Just yesterday I had it from the captain of a certain ship that it’s all quite true! And even if it is not all true, why, there are ten kingdoms in Atlantis, each with a king who sits at the Atlantean council—and each king needs good men! We could carry spears and bask in the sun and drink the king’s wine! Meanwhile—what harm to visit Poseidonia and see if the treasure for the ten is indeed on offer?”
“We have no way to get to Atlantis, even should I agree on such a foolish expedition,” Brimm grumbled. He sipped the dregs of his ale and put his empty flagon down in disgust. “After paying our score here, we are now without funds.”
“I am the friend of your boyhood, one of the few who could bear your prideful ways. Would I invite you along on an adventure an adventure guaranteed to bring riches—had I no means to get us there?”
“What means do you have?” Brimm asked suspiciously.
“Ah . . . as to that . . . I have an arrangement with the very captain I mentioned! He needs mercenaries to protect his ship. He needs them tonight, so badly he’ll take anyone, even you and your pretty sword! He assures me there will be free food, wine every night, and we may sit at our ease the whole way to Atlantis.”
“Snoori, you have turned me into a galley slave,” Brimm said bitterly. “Had I more slack in my chain I would strangle you with it.”
The sun was high. They were overdue for their noon gruel, and for the cupful of water that kept them from dying of thirst. Great green waves lifted as if to stare into the galley, and then sank back; clouds curdled on the horizon; dolphins followed their wake, making their mad laughing sounds at the two rows of chained men, as if to say We are free to leap, to cavort, and you must hunch in the sun on a sweat-stained bench. The manacles were hot from the sunlight, burning Brimm’s wrists. Once when the galley rose on the waves so that he could see the dolphins, he glimpsed a green-skinned nereid, naked but for a filigree of foam, riding one of the dolphins as it arched from the sea; she too laughed at him before vanishing into the billows.
“I was quite surprised Captain Zenk had his brute strike us from behind,” Snoori admitted, nodding, when the row-master had stalked past. “And truly astounded that he chained us to the oars,” he added, putting his back into the stroke as he saw the burly, bow-legged row-master approaching with his whip. “I knew it was a galley but he said we would merely act as lookouts, and fight if necessary. It’s all quite surprising. I thought myself a better judge of men.”
“Or perhaps I might not strangle you,” murmured Brimm, as if savoring a new concept. “Perhaps I’ll strangle that great whip-bearing ape, then take over the ship and leave you chained at the oars. That might be more satisfying.”
“Brimm, Brimm, you abuse me! The winds have been fair, we are indeed headed toward Atlantis, and we haven’t had to row constantly.”
“We have rowed most of four days—it feels like four years!” Normally Brimm was slow to indulge in complaints but this was Snoori’s doing and he deserved to hear it. Or so Brimm told himself. “My hands are raw. My back is aching. Sunburn blackens me. I am abased! I; am a scholar, not a slave!”
“ . . . And they do give us wine in the evening.”
“That swill? The rank spoilage from their kegs.” He was constantly sick to his stomach but couldn’t tell if it was from the fish stew, the sour wine, the ever-thickening stench of bilge—or the rising waves. Up the face of one enormous wave they sailed, down another, up and down perpetually. He had sailed beyond sight of land with his father, when a boy, to deliver wave coursers to Keltia and Iberia, and had fared well enough; but as the son of the shipmaster he had lolled in the shade of the sails, taking lessons in navigation and cordage. Now he was fallen to the lowest station of men, apart from the cockeyed boy who emptied their stool pots. Chained at the oars in front of him were aging cutthroats, scooped from the gutters of Hypexa; rowing behind him were several witless farmhands, caught by a thump on the head as he had been.
“Have I no more wit than a gaping farmhand?” he murmured aloud. Perhaps he was at fault as much as Snoori. He should have known better.
If it had been a trireme, at least he’d have been under a deck cover, sheltered from the sun. But this was but a pentekontor, a two-masted, square-sailed vessel rowed by fifty men, twenty-five to a side; there was a slightly raised deck between, and the shade of the sails scarcely reached Brimm and Snoori.
A shadow did fall over him then—that of the row-master. “Keep rhythm, dog!” snarled the row-master, and on the word “rhythm” snapped the very tip of his whip betwixt Brimm’s shoulder blades, not so hard as to damage the muscles of a useful slave, but with an exacting flick that stung like a wasp, doubly painful because it struck sunburned skin.
Brimm hissed between grinding teeth, and fell into rhythm. It was not easy to row with Snoori at his side. Snoori was broad shouldered but short-legged, coming not quite up to Brimm’s shoulder. There was a saying that a tall man and a small man could not row well together, and now he saw it was so.
As he struggled to row with Snoori, Brimm noticed the ship’s captain, Zenk—a swarthy man in a red turban and yellow silk—making his way to the prow of the vessel, now and then missing stride as the ship rolled. But what held Brimm’s gaze was the sword borne awkwardly in Zenk’s yellow sash. It was Brimm’s own piercer.
But the Atlantean piercer must be used properly. The tubby, oafish Captain Zenk wouldn’t be able to cut a melon with the blade, Brimm was sure, let alone an enemy.
The night Snoori and Brimm had come aboard, Zenk had greeted them affably enough, then pointed to the prow. They had turned to look, and the row-master had cracked them firmly on their heads from behind, using an oar as a club, wielding it in one vigorous swing. Down they went—and so went Brimm’s sword, his dagger, his cloak, and his freedom.
“I’ll show you how that sword is used, you strutting boar,” Brimm muttered, watching him.
But first he must lay his hands on the blade—hands confined by iron chains. He had already tried magicking them off with Rootsun’s Efficacious Unchainer, but—judging from the lack of results—he had failed to memorize the spell properly. His erstwhile master, Urgus, had hectored him for his “lackadaisical, feeble, haphazard efforts at memorization” and not for the first time Brimm feared Urgus had been right about him. Of course, he had never envisaged himself in chains. Why then learn an unchaining spell? He had not anticipated Captain Zenk.
But other spells had a certain fascination for him . . . Rootsun’s Divulger of the Feminine Mind, Lurania’s Guaranteed Charisma Enhancer, Urgus’s own Summoning for the Smiting of Enemies . . . But suppose he persuaded an elemental to smite Captain Zenk? How would it get him out of these chains? It might end up sinking the ship and him with it.
And so he sighed, and waited. Time seemed to slow; it dragged by, measured only by the steady creak of the oars—and then a spindly, coughing rower chained near the prow gave a final gasp, lunged against his chains, and collapsed. His brother, who had been kidnapped with him, cried out for help. The row-master took a quick look, unchained the spindly man, and tossed him headfirst over the side. His brother sobbed, and was beaten for it.
Brimm decided he would complain no further. It was
a waste of energy—and he had come to this vessel of his own accord.
Fatigue and monotony and rising temperatures melted the days together. Two weeks passed. Occasionally, when a strong following wind pushed them rapidly enough, they were allowed to walk the decks a few at a time, to keep their muscles from cramping up and becoming useless. But even then they were kept on long chains, like hounds on leashes, and watched closely by a hulking much-scarred Hyperborean brute armed with a spiked hammer.
Once as he worked the oars, feeling the sea was the measure of his mounting despair, Brimm called out to the conventional gods of his people: that triumvirate of giants, Apollon, and his sons Boreas and Chione. But they did not respond; they never had, perhaps because Brimm had never sacrificed to them.
Brimm recalled that Urgus had jeered at the usual gods like Wotan and Apollon, saying they were mere egregores, creations of the human mind. Urgus insisted there were only a handful of true “titanic beings”—that was his term for them—like the goddess of fertility, the Red Lord of war, and the sea king whom the Atlanteans called Poseidon. These were intermediary entities, emanations of the Unnameable Lord above all, the secret god who over-arched all things, whose true name was known to but a few, and who, at any rate, held himself remote from mankind. Below the Unameable and the titanic beings were the elementals, and below them the invisible spirits, who sometimes showed themselves to mankind and could occasionally be treated with, and even controlled . . .
But Urgus himself had claimed to worship only the unnameable one. He did not practice rituals of submission to the Titanic Beings. “You’re best being ignored by them,” he said.
“Oh, Unnameable Lord,” murmured Brimm, late afternoon, “you who Urgus spoke of only by touching the Sign of Nine Points—can you not help us this once?”
It seemed to his disordered senses that the sun briefly flared in the sky. But Brimm only hung his head, fearing madness was creeping up on him.
